Here is the first of two reports from the trip Rebekah and I took to British Columbia (BC). We went to Westbank and The Potter's House Community Church .
On the way and on the way back we stopped off for several hours in several strategic cities along the route, both of which have very little evangelical churches. The city that we stopped off in on the way was Revelstoke, BC. Revelstoke is a city of about 7500 people and is located directly on the Trans Canada Highway just west of the Rocky Mountains. It is a popular stopping point for tourists and travelers heading into and out of the mountains. The city is much more alive during the summer than it is during this time of year (early March) but we wanted to see what was going on. We looked around the town, but just driving and found some churches, one each of most of the typical ones that you would see in many small Canadian communities, Alliance, United, Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal and a few smaller ones. After driving around and looking at the town, we went parked and walked around the town. For those of you who know me, one place I love to go while scouting a town is a coffee house. We found one downtown, where the average age was at least 65. This was not indicative of the entire town, but this one coffee house was definately for the older people in the town. We didn't stay long and continued our walking and praying through the town. The town seemed to be fairly active in terms of people being out and about on the streets, we were there about 3pm, but everyone seemed to be focused on the task at hand whether that was work, going home after school, or just being out and about. After we finished walking, we did some more driving and found a section of town that had an abundance of ball fields, mainly soccer and baseball. There had to be 10 or 12 fields in one location, which seemed like a lot for a town of 7500. The level of involvement of the town in these sports could definately be good information for someone looking to plant a church in the community. Another interesting thing that we found was the almost new Revelstoke Aquatic Centre. This was a super facility that had a full size Olympic pool, sauna, hot tubs, water slide, leisure pool, lazy river, and a water rock climbing wall that comes up directly out of one of the pools. It would be a great place to meet people. Despite the great looking around that we did, we didn't have a significant conversation with anyone. Little did we know how that would change when we left Revelstoke and arrived in Westbank.
We had scouted Revelstoke on Thursday, and on Saturday morning we were at the home of Rob and Cindy Clements, the family that we stayed with in Westbank, and the girl that rents their downstairs suite came upstairs to borrow the phone, which according to Cindy is unusual. This girl, who's name is Jessica, also stayed and sat down to have breakfast with all of us. We were all just having conversation, and Cindy just happened to mention what Rebekah and I were doing in Westbank. It eventually got around to the fact that we had stopped off in Revelstoke on our way. Jessica said, oh yeah, Revelstoke, that's my hometown, my entire family still lives there!! Open door, time to walk through it. We talked about Revelstoke and the city and other things, and eventually Jessica said that her family had grown up in the United Church, but nobody really went anymore. Needless to say, Jessica and her family are a great, possible contact in Revelstoke. I know that I will be in contact with Jessica in the future. The neatest thing about this is we didn't feel like things had gone that well in Revelstoke, but it was when we got to Westbank it became clear what we needed to learn about Revelstoke. Overall, our scouting of Revelstoke went very well. Check the blog again soon to hear the report from Golden, BC.